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Punishment by Performance

by Toby Johnson

Soon
after the Spring Equinox 1996, thirteen EarthWatch volunteers from the
U.S., Canada, and Great Britain arrived in India on a mission to
document and record "for posterity" the Spring/New Year's festivities
in the region around Cuttack, Orissa, just inland from the Bay of Begal
roughly a hundred kilometers south of the city of Calcutta. The
festivities, which include both specifically religious elements and
general cultural celebratory elements, are loosely called Danda Nata.

Danda Nata can be translated "Punishment through Performance." The
religious side of the New Year's celebration, not unlike New Year's
commemorations in the West, was focused on self-discipline and penance
with the intention of making reforms in the future year and in the
hopes of receiving blessings for oneself and for one's community as a
reward for undergoing prescribed austerities.

Apparently, partly because the "austerities" involve performing rituals
and feats of skill, the New Year's festivities also include theatrical
performances and entertainments.

The Religious Observance

Thirteen young men, called bhoktas are selected from the village. They
volunteer apparently because they have personal issues in their lives
that they want to reform and/or because participation in the ritual
brings prestige and respect. The bhoktas make vows of sexual
abstinence, fasting, and retreat for the thirteen days of the festival.

Several times during those thirteen days they perform rituals that
include the whole community in their observances and, not incidentally,
entertain the villagers as the bhoktas demonstrate prowess in
certain manly activities. These consist of an opening ceremony in which
the individual bhoktas and the members of the whole village determine
hopes and intentions (which must parallel the West's "new year's
resolutions") and then mystically enclose these in a consecrated "pot
of desires"; several spontaneous events throughout the course of the
thirteen days in which the bhoktas perform for the villagers, doing
such things as hopping as one foot, rolling in the dust, and forming
human pyramids, generally in response to challenges given them by the
"high priest"/emcee/jester of the event, and then, after ceremonially
washing at the ghat in the village pond and stirring one of the bhoktas
into a trance state to become the goddess Kalika, parading through the
village with torches while receiving offerings and bestowing blessings;
and finally a particularly festive closing ceremony which includes
yogic feats, such as firewalking and rolling in piles of thorny
branches.

While the whole thing was predicated on a model of austerities and
feats of bravery and difficulty, in fact, the performances of the
bhoktas were far less solemn than their context would suggest. The
Danda Nata seemed more like a Boy Scout Jamboree or a fraternity hazing
than a solemn religious event. Young men the world over generally like
to perform and show off as part of growing up and taking a place in
adult society. It's not unusual for such an event to be presented in a
religious context.

That the Danda Nata seemed to Westerners as less solemn than a Boy
Scout Jamboree is perhaps primarily indicative of the Western dichotomy
between things religious and things secular and between things serious
and things festive.
The Theatrical Performances

Perhaps simply because of the use of the term "performance" in
the name of the religious ritual, the New Year's festival also includes
theatrical and musical performances by acting troupes in the villages.
These performances, accompanied by street fairs and bazaars, are
generally conducted as competitions between troupes from different
villages.

To the Western ear, these performances were difficult to listen to: the
qualities of music-- harmony, rhythm, melody, etc-- between East and
West are incompatible. What to the Indian ear must have sounded like
appealing music and singing, to the Western ear, I fear, sounded rather
more like unpleasant noise.

An interesting thing about the performance competitions was that,
apparently, the order of skits in a competition is prescribed and the
characters presented determined by tradition. What varies from
performance to performance and from troupe to troupe, village to
village, is the specific dialogue composed for each skit. Thus, for
instance, the first skit is always an episode from the Ramayana, the
second episode is always about a modern married couple fighting over
the husband's drinking pattern. What varies is the kind of repartee
that goes on between the characters.

Because this repartee was in a language the Westerners could not
understand, a great deal of the novelty in the performances was
unapparent and so went unappreciated.

It seemed to me that the theatrical performances were only tangentially
linked to the religious ritual of the 13 bhoktas. This was New Years
and many things come together to form the whole of the celebration.
Spirit Possession

One of the most interesting aspects of the Danda Nata was the conjuring
of a possession state by one of the bhoktas. Through donning a special
costume (that was increasingly more gender-crossed as the 13 days
progressed) and then performing an induction through dance and
gyration, one of the young men went into a possession state in which he
"became" an incarnation of the goddess Kalika.

Trance induction seems to be a central part of many rituals. The
induced state ranges from meditative concentration to full-blown
possession by supernatural entities.

In the Danda Nata observed by the EarthWatch team in the town of
Ponchugon, the possession seemed more ceremonial than real. The bhokta
who became Kalika and was able thus to hear and respond to the
villagers' petitions did not appear all that possessed. At least he did
not seem out of conscious control. It is impossible, however, for an
observer to know what the young man himself was experiencing.

What is certainly true is that central to the ritual and performance of
the Danda Nata is the archetypal phenomenon of the god manifesting
directly through one of the celebrants. It is in this wise that the
whole village gets to participate in the mystical events of the
festival.

The bhoktas were apparently practicing some sort of
meditation/retreat/austerities in their personal roles. Thus they were
likely to induce some sort of mystical experience in their own
meditative trance. But it goes no further.

The ritual induction of the trance state during a public performance
allowed the participants and observers alike to join in to the mystical
phenomena by projecting into one of the celebrants the actual presence
of the god/goddess.
Personal Reflections

I had quite an experience in India. I am still reeling a little.
EarthWatch

There were 13 westerners on this EarthWatch-sponsored expedition to
Tigiria, a little peasant village in the state of Orissa about 100
miles south of Calcutta on the plain sloping down to the Bay of Bengal.
The Principal Investigators for the project were Chandrapanu Pattanayak
and his wife Vibha Sharma. They are graduate students in Montreal.
Chandra is the eldest son of the eldest son of the tribal warrior who
was head of the village before the current government and modern
society came to dominate India. While he's no longer legally a warrior
lord, he's still at the top of the caste system and owner of most of
the land that comprises the town's fields.

The village was lovely: thatched roof huts of mud brick and/or
concrete, built among coconut and mango groves. It was surprisingly
tropical. I joked I had been expecting to find a land dotted with
little Taj Mahals and white stucco houses like Greece, with everyone
dressed in white pajamas, but instead I found myself in what looked
like the South Pacific. The men dressed in sarong-like garments called
longees which left the chest bare and scarves called shojis thrown over
the shoulders in a variety of ways. The women dressed in saris, and did
look more expectedly Indian than South Pacific.

Here are Toby
Johnson and his partner Kip Dollar, back in Austin
after Toby's journey, wearing the Indian longees

The accommodations were
very rudimentary. We had electricity (for
lights and ceiling fans), but not running water. The toilet facility
was a little concrete trough to squat over. We washed with water we
brought with us in a bucket into the "loo"-as we took to calling it,
following the Britons' convention-carrying the bucket with the right
hand. The water came from a stone tub in the "shower" which we filled
by carrying water in from a pump outside the house. We "bathed" by
throwing water from the tub over ourselves with a plastic cup.

The temperature was very hot. And the atmosphere very humid. I think
this was because we were on the coastal plain and got lots of moisture
blowing up from the Bay. There was a drenching dew most mornings. We
sweated profusely--this was one of the hardest parts of the whole
experience. Thank God for the ceiling fans.

The rituals we went to see were not all that spectacular, at least not
for all the hardships. But they were interesting. The whole experience
was interesting. I''m very glad I did it. AND I wish it could have been
done in one week rather than three. There was really only about one
week's worth of experience. But it was spread out over a much longer
time of many hot days and nights with very little to do.

I liked the simplicity of life in India. I saw that as a kind of "life
of the future": they are passing directly into the Electronic Age
without having gone through industrialization. They haven't developed
our dependency on machines and "labor-saving devices," most of which
use lots of energy. Electronics can be powered with solar on a
microenergy scale.

The townsfolk are not "primitive" or "backwards." They are somewhat
sophisticated, I think, about the nature of the outside world: they
have TV. Tho', in the village, there is not access to American TV which
comes over cable and is available only in the cities; while in Calcutta
on an overnight layover, I watched The Love Boat. The Indian government
provides Hindi TV thru a stationary satellite that any TV set can pick
up.

At the same time, because Tigiria is off the tourist routes, most of
the people -- and certainly the children -- had effectively never seen
white people before. So we were quite a curosity and an attraction to
them. Most everywhere we went, we were followed by crowds of children
wanting to touch us, shake hands with us, slap palms (jive style)
and/or practice their English--with phrases like "What is your father's
name?" "What is your father's occupation?"

They were very preoccupied with father's name and occupation because
those were indicators of caste status.

While under the current democratic, secular government, caste and
social hierarchy no longer have legal status, they dominate life in the
village. Even the arrangement of the houses, we saw, was determined by
social status.

Part of the experience of India was seeing how relationships there
work. Most marriages are still arranged--tho' apparently many parents
are happy if the children will find mates for themselves (a la the
western model) then they don't have to go through the difficult chore
of finding a marriage partner. But they still expect the partner to fit
all the requirements of an old-fashioned arranged marriage. And "love"
is not one of the criteria. Nonetheless, sexuality is a vibrant part of
the culture-if only in the sense of being clearly apparent in the
iconography of the culture.
Erotic Temples

One of the places we visited on our way to the village was the Temple
at Konarak. This is one of those Hindu temples decorated all over the
outside with erotic art from the high Tantric period.

I remember renowned religions scholar Joseph Campbell, my friend and
mentor, several times recounting his visit to this temple. He told how
he asked people, "why the erotic art?" A religion scholar explained
about the Tantric periodin Hindu history; a local tour guide declared
the erotic sculptures were on the outside to keep the impure of heart
out of the temple (cause they'd stay outside looking at the pictures
instead of going in); an old holy man responded to Joe's question:
"What else would you put on the outside of a temple?"

As he reached the punch line, Joe would always laugh heartily.

The men's sexuality was interesting to me as a politically active and
psychologically sophisticated gay man. The Indians are very dark
skinned, but are caucasian and have "white" features. Many are quite
handsome (the Errol Flynn look), and deliberately so, some wearing kohl
in their eyes to look more alluring. During the bright sun of the day
they often wear modern shirts, but in the evening they change to the
longees and go out barechested in the evening air. At least in the
village where most people are vegetarian, relatively poor, and
generally laboring class, they are frequently tall and thin with very
good muscle definition and long torsos, often hairy. I was quite
impressed with their sexual beauty. Even the older men looked fit and
attractive.

They were very flirtatious. Often the whole village took on the look of
an American gay men's resort, like Provincetown or Fire Island: all the
men, no women in sight, out socializing with one another in the
evenings, barechested, holding hands and hugging one another, standing
shoulder to shoulder watching each other and smiling to all the
passersby.

To add to the gay culture parallels, most of the "performances"
we saw were done by men dressed in outrageous drag. Women don't perform
on stage, so Elizabethan-style, the men do all the roles. Well, they
certainly seemed to enjoy cross-dressing and camping up. They put on
great drag shows.

I don't know if I was getting special attention because I was white
tourist and a curiosity or whether at least some of them were picking
me up on their "gaydar." One fellow came up to me and tried to make
conversation. He said several times: "my house." Was that a
proposition? An invitation for tea? Or were the words "my house" the
only English he knew?

Another young fellow was clearly flirting and flashing his eyes at me.
All of the other boys, I noticed, put their hands on him when they
stood near, as tho' he were the village "boy toy" and beloved of all
the men and boys. I think he wanted me to bring him back to
America with me and would have been happy to accept any sort of
position for such a favor.

I did not know what to do with the sexuality around me. I understood
that this culture had an entirely different take on sex from my native
modern America and I definitely did not want to commit any cultural
transgressions. I was a guest of the eldest son of the village's most
noble family and, therefore, "on my best behavior." Besides, perhaps
because of the hygiene compromises I was making, I had virtually no
desire to touch any thing -- much less any one. For what seemed like a
reasonable fear of catching something awful I was very wary of putting
anything in my mouth-including the food. (In fact, I had no diseases at
all, tho' did have hay-fever from the spring pollens.)

The Headmaster of the local school, who befriended the EarthWatchers,
told me that "homosexuality" was forbidden by their religion, but he
was quite interested in hearing how I thought Western gay consciousness
differed from whatever the old religions would have made sexual taboos
about and certainly didn't seemed judgmental.

The religion, nonetheless, often seemed to be more "superstitious" than
holy. I was surprised by that. And was reminded that a great part of
modernization is the development of perspective on religion-and with it
transcendence of religion.

The local god in Orissa is Lord Jagernath--from which comes the English
word "juggernaut" for an unstoppable force. We visited the temple--tho'
could not go inside (only Hindus are allowed). Each year in mid-spring
they bring out the god (and his brother and little sister) and carry
them on the huge carts, six stories tall and pulled by thousands of
people, that have come to be known as juggernauts.

Jagernath is an "idol" made of wood that looks pretty much like a toy
penguin painted up with a funny face. Every twelve years, he is carved
a new body. This year is such a year. And a major festival was coming
up that would include the consecration of a new statue to be carried
out on the procession.

The main avenue of Puri, down which the juggernauts roll, is crowded
daily with pilgrims and beggars. We were surrounded by lepers and
maimed supplicants who wouldn’t take no for an answer. (In one of the
begging places, we saw a 10 or 12 year old boy whose penis had been cut
off to elict pity--and more alms.)
The EarthWatch Team

Curiously there were 13 volunteers singed up for this mission, just as
there were 13 bhoktas who volunteered for their roles in the Danda
Nata. Like the bhoktas, the volunteers were effectively (de facto,
though not de jure) deprived of sex, food, and privacy. We were
undergoing a "punishment" and a purification.

The joke, of course, was that observing the theatrical performances in
their alien style and difficult music was itself a "punishment by
performance" and our central function was carrying out the spirit of
the ritual.

The "scientific research" phase of the mission began with a
presentation by the Principal Investigator, Chandrabhanu Pattanayak,
about the ironies and contradictions of the "participant-observer"
modality of ethnographic research. The presence of the EarthWatch team
necessarily altered the experience of the Danda Nata by both the
bhoktas and the villagers (both those who attended and those who
deliberately did NOT attend). And, because we could only manage to
comprehend a fraction of what was going on -- and that out of context,
what we saw and how we reacted had little significance. My impressions
don't matter for much, tho' here they are.

Nonetheless, we were ourselves experiencing danda nata and came away
"purified" for having undergone a difficult experience, confronted
aspects of ourselves we were likely unfamiliar with, and opened
ourselves to be "possessed" by the culture of India into which we threw
ourselves.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.